Harry’s Reviews > Granta 64: Russia: The Wild East > Status Update

But autumn was a long-ago, forgotten time--the earth was now poor and free, it was going to give birth to everything all over again, to creatures that had never lived before. Nikita was not even in a hurry to get to Lyuba; he liked being in the gloomy light of this early earth which had no memory and had forgotten all who had died on it..

All through the night he walked alone through empty places; the wind from the fields wandered aimlessly around him, now grazing his face, now blowing against his back, and sometimes withdrawing altogether into the ravine beside the path. The earth lay dark on the slopes and on the high plowland, the snow had run off into the hollows, and there was a smell of young water and old grass that had lain there since autumn.